Corsica-Plage de Pallombaggia

The next day we all went to the famous Pallombaggia beach which was really amazing.


After a long swim, Janet and I ended up passing out in the sun for a short nap while grandma and grandpa watched the kids.



How could I resist? Beautiful beach, beautiful wife....
We spent a lot of the day under water observing the fish. Janet followed a stingray around for a while. My dad and I swam out to the rocky island in the background.


That night we celebrated Jonas' birthday again at the campsite.
He was really excited about the sand toys which were perfect for the beach.
My dad bought us some great pizza au feu de bois (wood oven) with eggplant and olives. We added fresh tomatoes and sliced red peppers. On the side a nice green salad with a classy vinaigrette sauce. Janet picked out a really good French cake.


When it was time to move on we found this enormous caterpillar on the tent.

Trip to Corsica-Bonifacio

With summer vacation coming to a close (Jaxon starts school tomorrow) I thought it was high time to document our summer adventures. It has been a great! It all started the end of June when Daniel's parents came out for a visit. Somehow we convinced them to leave the day after their arrival to drive to Savona, Italy and spend the night there before hopping on an early morning boat to Corsica and cruising down to the islands southernmost tip. All I can say is that they are troopers! Corsica has been Daniel's dream for years, and now it finally came true.
It was a four hour boat ride, during which everyone enjoyed the scenery and the breeze on the deck. With the exception of me, huddled inside the boat on my laptop. Based on the pictures they seemed to have had a great time.


As soon as we got off the boat in Bastia we took off toward Bonifacio. We chose this destination not only because it looked beautiful, but also due to its easy access, 2 1/2 hours from Bastia on the best maintained, least windy road on the island. Unfortunately we found that this particular road was closed just outside of Bastia because of a large accident. So we were forced through the center of the island and forged our way through the windy road south. All in all it took closer to 5 hours, but it was a beautiful drive and well worth the effort.

Our first real day in Corsica we left the island for an even smaller group of islands, the Lavezzi islands, notable due to their odd rock formations. We hiked around for awhile until we found the perfect beach.

If you can make out two little shadow people on the rocks in the background that would be Daniel and Richard.
This was the first time that Jaxon really figured out the snorkel and went snorkeling. He quickly became a snorkeling machine. Couldn't be stopped! I loved being able to see him discover this new underwater world. It is really some of the best snorkeling we have done and I was thrilled that he was able to enjoy it.



Jonas alternately enjoyed swimming...
And napping in his makeshift bed.Jaxon and I sat on the front of the boat for the first portion of the trip, and got drenched. Which would have been nicer had it not been for the cool wind whipping us around.


The boat trip back was a scenic ride along the cliffs and the sea caves. Unfortunately Jaxon missed most of it.


Our next day we took some time to enjoy Bonafacio and its environs.

We took a hike along the cliff line out to a lighthouse.

Enjoying a somewhat violent lunch.











Reaching the lighthouse.

Later that afternoon we hiked down this super-steep stairway to where the Bonifacians used to go the fetch water. Or so they said. But I didn't see any fresh water down there.



It was very cool, if not so safe. But even Jonas survived, in spite of his death wish.
This part, with no barrier, kind of creeped even me out.
I love old steep stairs.
It was a great day.

Camping Brienz

A couple of weeks ago we went camping in Bernese Oberland with our good friends, the Hiatts. We spend Saturday at Ballenberg, which is an amazing open-air museum. Can I just say that I am a sucker for open-air museum? This one was really amazing with imported chalets from every region in Switzerland and dating back a few hundred year. We really had a blast.
If you wonder what Daniel is doing in this photo, he is being the Heisman trophey.





Evan, keep your head in!
With all the amazing things to see, I think this slug may have been the kids' favorite..




Jonas yelled, "Hey, Donkey! Don't eat the caca, okay?"
The Roundy's were able to meet us in the afternoon. Through some miracle, Daniel actually managed to get control of all six of these kids for about 30 seconds. Definitely picture worthy.


We visited the small chocolate factory at Ballenberg. Jaxon was enthalled watching this machine stir the huge vat of mouth-watering chocolate. I admired with him for a moment, thinking of how delicious it would be to dip some strawberries in that pool of chocolate. I asked Jaxon what he wanted to put in there. "I want to me in there," he replied. "And eat ALL the chocolate!"
Here we are at the campsite. It had a great park for the kids and an unbeatable setting. However, Jaxon's favorite?...
The elephant shower. My favorite? Being able to put all the kids to bed and be able to hang out just with the adults.
The next day we headed over the mountains to visit Lucern. We took a little time out to eat our lunch at this beautiful spot.

Lucern was fabulous and beautiful.





I absolutely loved the building facades.


The Hiatts left that evening from Lucern, and we stayed one more night. We had had the great idea of bringing our fondue pot to make pasta, since we had not yet bought a camping stove. The idea was good, however the pasta was a little soggy since the water never really reached a "rolling" boil.
The boys played in the lake at our campsite. I think I managed to capture to some degree the blue of this alpine lake. It is stunning.

We didn't let the rain keep us from a hike up some waterfalls the next day.



Okay, so this was something I definitely had never seen before: a slug eating a mouse. Gross, but strangly intriguing. Jaxon said, "Wow, that is a fast slug."



It was a great 3-day weekend!